Tuesday, 26 February 2008

If you thought a song called People Get Real would consist of finger-waving Jeremy Kyle sound bites and street-savvy colloquialisms then speak to the hand and get a DNA test – Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell resists the urge to holler “you ain’t my real mutha anyways” by reuniting the raddled 90s pop scene with revised 1960s kitsch so dreamy it’s beyond hallucination.Cracknell’s foamy and breathlessly quiff-like cooing won’t worry Whitney, but does the job wonderfully with her menacingly sweet abilities, as on the dense melancholy of Avenue, swirling in delicious candyfloss nostalgia.Kiss & Make Up sung by Donna Savage floats ashore giving you memories you never had in the first place.

Counteracting these warm tones of lush promenade promise, the stoic disco coping strategy Like A Motorway is a lucid account of detached echoing grief – Cracknells cracked façade absorbs into the lurid Moroder bass line like ink bleeding onto paper, with the untouchable fluid fatality of reading a suicide note mirrored to the greediness of an intrusive newspaper headline.Her frozen horror fades into the horizon but with lingering calculation.

Further on in their discography, the cosy “hold tight” stargazing flight of Stars Above Us gave the group their best chance of a hit single since the Motiv8 rampage He’s On The Phone.With a possible dance project igniting the rumour mill perhaps once more they are on the cusp to deliver disorientated pop perfection all over again.

Saturday, 23 February 2008

South African starlet Genevieve Waite is a riot of eccentricity on her 1 and only album Romance Is On The Rise; her sultry allure presents an untampered raggedly elegant style that is effortlessly charming like a telling hic-up of gin bubbles. As on the sun-soaked bonus track PinkGin & Lime, her drowsy drawl (a shredded, expressive rasp) and whimsical clasp of daft kitsch is sharper than the heels she stumbles in as her stories slide into dreamy stupors ("pink gin & lime for a fake ballerina, out of her mind from sniffin' dry cleaner" is the helium highlight here) . Piano keys are pervasively pressed as if rippling a pool of champagne, but trip over themselves on the jaunty Times of Love, which stumbles merrily - Waite's weightless orgasm of infatuation chuckles she hasn't left the house for days (does she use gaydar too?). The trumpeting Slumming On Park Avenue could be an alcoholic Mary Poppins "sniffing everything in sight" with its giddy glee intermission feel, whilst the self-assured jazzy show tune Biting My Nails catches the jiving songbird in the act.

Her wide-eyed carnage is hushed into a sweetly yawning torch ballad on American Man On The Moon where her ponderous crooning sounds delicately overcome like a jewellery box ballerina gently winding down. Elsewhere there is the soft strum of the nose-blowing ballad Saying Goodbye, the chic disco drive-thru of White Cadillac, Those Trashy Rumours moves slower and the dried up tears of Danny. The stifled resignation of Girls offers her breezy humour more wickedly straight moments: "girls are running 'round in your head, you'll wish you liked boys instead." Her often poignant elixir of tender innocence and indulgent decadence equips her perfectly to cover Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, wherein the casual lyric "hear the way she talks" could have been especially tailored for the beguiling chanteuse. Waite's infectious insouciance creates a dainty scenery littered with lyrical quips and campy flourishes of flagrant truth. With each listen, her perky entertainment of spirited flamboyance and smirking ceremony is never remotely diminished.

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Celine's fluttering forray into faceless hyper-barmy Euro-dance slams the piano keys with itching grit and feerless surrender to the grooves taking (chances) over her otherwise signature sense of restrain. Dion applies simplistic ideals in order to aid the quivering quest to free her quaking heartache at all costs - she'll quite happily interrupt family squabbles in exclusive restaurants such as Little Chef by bursting into her dance track gem Just A Little Bit of Love. Her well-publicised ability to express earnest emotion using her forehead is given alarming relief to give Celine no other option but to impulsively hit the dancefloor in order to solve the worlds problems.

Monday, 11 February 2008

Apart from having a fully functioning vagina (or otherwise), the other main criteria for being a credible dance diva beyond being "down with the Gays" is to be in it for the long run. In-the-mix Euro Minx and Dutch dance dealer Amber lays her cards on the table better than ever with her revved-up belter Just Like That, more than 13 years after she first started with her tracks produced by the Real McCoy helmers. She delivers more regularly than a fully booked prostitute in Iraq.

The Jason Nevins Remix hardens her sound, fleshing out her already tough-if-slightly-bonkers lyrical 'tude. Nevins decorates the track as if fawning over Flash Dance by Deep Dish, before it plunges like a Mogul Skiing onslaught.

Voodoo's absorbing allure, ponders the sharp edge of a knife. A chorus carves consise scrutinised adrenaline worthy of her best harcore euro bafflers.

Amber is a dance deity and even if these remixes were what was required to salvage an arguably patchy album not entirely committed to dance, they prove her to still be in contention as a thriving force equally strong as when she started if not more.Just Like That (Jason Nevins Club Mix)

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Taco-sized ItalianAlexia shuns all traces of modesty and obviously believes she is quite the catch, proudly propositioning men to "feel the vibe, whoa-whoa-yeah" on one of her best album track slices of rampant Hi-NRG harassment, MakeYouHappy. Not taking no for an answer covers familiar subject matter for the diva (Gimme Love, I Want You, to name but two others), but Alex laughs off her restraining orders to belt out another bullet-proof Euro bopper with her unique sense of dancefloor mayhem.MakeYouHappy

Monday, 4 February 2008

Corona's belated 1998 sophomore album fell short on their trademark bouyant Hi-NRG happy-slappers, but the prozac-pumping pulse of The Power of Love at least skims the surface of what should have been an everlasting disco orgy. Vocalist Sandy Chambers' shit-gritting breazy delivery determins to "be the bii-est" (Note: not the most bisexual) like no other faceless session singer before her, and is effortless like power steering. The face of Corona - half Brazillian Goddess, half human skyscraper - Olga Souza had to make do with a video budget cheaper than a shoplifted pregnancy test, yet still strikes her unmistakable poses whilst wearing a pink wig that would later be stollen by a young Britney Spears. The self-referencing title track, Walking On Music, surfs a more ecstatic wave.

Polish Plavka Lonich will do just anything for a Visa - she doesn't need one but when a fat man in a suit says he will give her one then she is ready for just about anything. The Bosche & Lomb factory worker once sang on Jam & Spoon's mega hit RightInTheNight(FallInLoveWithMusic), but her restrained-yet-powerful quality was a thing of beauty on the follow-flop-up FindMe. Sounding ripe like bleeding cherries, her caramalised connection to the apocaliptic trance is poised perfection. The bleak sounding FindMe gives her an eloquence beyond experience (her phoney Visa pursuits have took her places that would make a whore blush, etc), and the haunting Angel(LadadiO-Heyo) is possibly even more stark with its flamenco flutter enticing the chace. Her vampishly detached iciness carves a sharp vocation that is impossible persuasion.